Another Balkan Mission

The Second Front Page

Nato Begins Collecting Weapons In Macedonia

The Death Of A British Soldier Highlighted The Dangers Posed By The Balkan Ethnic Conflict.

August 28, 2001|By Peter Finn, Washington Post

SKOPJE, Macedonia -- Beginning its third Balkan mission in six years, NATO on Monday collected the first weapons surrendered by ethnic Albanian rebels but also suffered its first casualty Sunday when a British soldier was killed by a slab of concrete thrown by a gang of Macedonian youths.

The death of 20-year-old Ian Collins highlighted the perils of an operation aimed at heading off full-scale civil war in a country beset by six months of ethnic conflict. The disarmament effort, planned to collect 3,300 rebel weapons in 30 days, has little support among the Macedonian people, who for months have been told by their government that NATO is an accomplice in a campaign of violence waged by the ethnic Albanian rebels.

In the village of Otlja, east of the capital Skopje, rebels from the National Liberation Army delivered 400 weapons in a single shipment to a farm warehouse Monday morning. The stockpile of arms was lined up neatly along concrete walls, and British engineers from the 16th Air Assault Brigade sat at rows of trestle tables in the middle of the warehouse, examining and registering each weapon.

More than 350 assault rifles, including Kalashnikovs in good condition, were turned in along with 50 antipersonnel mines, 20 antitank mines and a number of heavy machine guns, antitank weapons, rocket launchers and mortar shells.

"We have gathered in a good number of weapons today, but more importantly, some big stuff, and it's pleasing to see that some of it is in very good condition, practically new," British Maj. Alexander Dick told reporters at the scene.

But Operation Essential Harvest, as the NATO operation is called, continues to be overshadowed by violence and by derision from elements in the Macedonian government, who say the rebels have many more weapons than the figure of 3,300 accepted by NATO.

Collins, a private in the 9th Parachute Squadron of the British army's Royal Engineers, was killed in his NATO vehicle beside an overpass on the edge of Skopje where NATO vehicles have been attacked by rock-throwing youths at least twice before, NATO officials here said.